And The Mountains Echoed

I really loved Hosseini's other novels, The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns. I have anticipated reading this one for a while. I was disappointed with the book. It definitely is not as good as his other ones.

It was slow. It caught me a little shy of 50 pages, which in general is my sweet spot. If I don't like a book within the first 50 pages, usually I don't like it after I finish drudging my way through it and I feel like I've wasted my precious reading time on a bad book. So, I give books 50 pages. And The Mountains Echoed got interesting for me around page 47.

I loved the opening chapters. Hosseini opened by telling a story and I love how that story ended up relating to the real life of the characters. This novel is not compelling. I didn't ever feel like I needed to keep reading to find out what happens because I don't think that's the point of the novel. It's about the characters, not about a dramatic plot.

At first I thought the book and the narration was all over the place. The author tells the story of the characters through different time periods and different narrators that change every chapter, which left me confused and playing catch up for half the chapter before finally understanding how it all relates. It took work when he brought in new characters to figure out who they were and how they related to the story of the main characters.

But as I continued to read, the authors back and forth between time and characters was interesting and got easier to follow. The "I wonder what happened to her?" got answered just when you thought she was out of the book.

While it is slow and requires concentration, while it is not compelling, and it took me longer than most novels to read, it's a well written book. Just keep low expectations going in and know it's more about characters than story lines and riveting plots.